Biography

Here is what I started some months ago.  I've been trying write down my life experiences for many reasons.  People have been telling me my whole life that I should; I don't want to forget; And it's therapeutic on many levels.  So here goes:  

Fourteen People
I am 53 now. I am hoping the fact that I am writing this down finally is not auspicious that I have a knowing, a sensing, of my approaching demise. I have seen too many times, loved ones, and people I had only known for a short time even, behave in a way that later seemed to be a signaling to others, that they knew the end was near. Either they themselves were significantly different, or loved ones around them knew, throwing a celebration of that person’s life that was an over the top birthday party or not even their Birthday... Extended family was invited as well as long lost friends and acquaintances. Big posters were displayed throughout a house with snapshots and quote from their lives for all to see. The kind I have seen in funeral homes meant to warm the hearts of mourners showing testament to the great life someone had, only, this person was still alive, and without any warning, death was a year away - cancer, accident, whatever. Their cycle was nearing its end, and even though they maybe really did have an amazing life, they had no clue themselves, it was approaching, though every one else somehow did. And no matter what, despite whatever great life they had, if they weren’t worn out and so tired they felt ready; their life always seemed tragically short, especially if they were great people.
I hope the fact that I am writing this, is not my own sensing my own end, and it is motivating me to tell this story. They say, some people get religion when they see the light, some get it when they feel the heat. I just want to tell this story, so it doesn’t get lost, because most who may read this won’t believe some of this shit, and some will read it and not be surprised at all. So much incredible stuff goes on in this world that many average people never ever see or hear about, other than reading about another experience or knowing someone who knows someone else's story. How ever it gets told, especially this story, most, will just shake their head in disbelief, glad it wasn’t them that went through this. I guess kind of like the way I feel looking at Goya prints of the war atrocities he turned into practically the first documentation of the carnage that was common back then. You see it and feel blessed you were not born then but rather in the civilized times you see all about you now. But that kind of stuff still goes on all around us, it’s just less obvious, cause now, we live in our heads, and hide our whacked out compensatory behaviors.
I recall the day somewhere in my 30’s, when I was working as house painter, just blabbing some story from my life to a homeowner about some event from my childhood that should have put most in an institution or a least therapy for the rest of their lives, and not hearing any response from the homeowner to my completely unconscious rambling. I would tell stories, that I guess were cathartic for me, just blabbing away, and I look up to see this stare, their mouth open, maybe even eyes glistening, speechless . It dawned, oh yeah, I remember, this is not an average story, most people have one major event in their lives that change them forever. I just rattled off 5 moments that should have killed me like it was every man's experience, no wonder they are mute. Stop telling these stories about yourself you idiot, your hurting these people. Even worse, they feel sorry for you and maybe even wonder if you’re a stable person, working in their household. So I shut up for almost 20 years. I ain't getting any younger, and I don’t imaging death or the memory loss from old age is going to make any exception in my case, so I best get to writing this down.- 2- ‘07
August 18, 1953, 120AM Philadelphia, Pa. … I am born.
They say, the brain is a sponge, our bodies have cellular memory, and that all that we are is the collective accumulation of knowledge from the beginning of time, so essentially, we are a spirit entity walking around inside a living memory bank. Somewhere around the age of 4, I began to have this recurring nightmare. My mind used metaphor and imagery from my daily experience to give picture images to me, to convey the experience of being born. The house I lived in at the time was a split level tract home that was freshly built post WW2 on land that was formerly farmstead. It was a Levittown wannabe trend, just beginning that would lead to suburban sprawl and visual blight 50 years later. Water pipes. I could see the water pipes that came out of the dark crawl space of the basement area of out split level. I was terrified of what was in that crawl space, which was visible from my bed in that basement area where I slept with my 3 brothers. I could hear the water flowing through the pipes all the time. Some how, my brain processed these visual and auditory cues into explanatory images meant to show me, what I had been through only 4 years earlier. I n this recurring dream, I was being forced through those water pipes, and as a kid of 4, I knew physically, it was impossible to fit my body into a water pipe, but that was part of the terror of the dream. Over and over I found myself moving through those tiny pipes, being squeezed and forced slowly down their length, with water. Always this pushing force mashing and shoving me towards the opening from the darkness of the crawl space in my basement… and then … brilliance, dazzling lights, and giants, giant humans, grabbing at me, pulling me, all dressed in white, and wearing mask and hats. I swear this is the truth. I remember being born, but in imagery. And I did not realize that’s what those images were all about either till somewhere in my early teens and I recalled the nightmares that I had forgotten about for about 10 years. It all gelled about, from scenes I had been exposed to from TV, Movies reading, etc that time, that those dreams and images must be my mind processing my very own birth. How incredibly strange!!! But I do remember!!! I don’t remember where I was before that, and just as well, considering what was ahead of me was enough to juggle. But, there you have it. My first memories. I was born.
Now, why I was born into the family I was, is a mystery that both frightens me and fills me with awe. So here goes nothing.


The setting of the drama.

I am pushed out into this reality, from god knows where I was before, but I think it was slightly easier than what was heading my way. I read later in my life, which gave me great relief and an edge, that some should choose great difficulty to be born into , so they can shine their light upon a mess of a situation and give maybe others hope that we all can spin shit into gold. I also read that our resistance to wanting to be in our difficulties is the angel in us remembering how easy we had it before we got off the bus here, and we ain’t to happy about it, so we have this underlying resistance to digging in and getting our elbows dirty. It’s like we know what kind of shit is heading towards the fan and we are already wincing.

So, I get pushed out by one June D, of “I” Street in North Philadelphia. Did she have issues!!!!! Why I was drawn to this woman as my mother will give me great cause for speculation later in my life, either that I chose to help her somehow, or I had some karmic debt to repay for some unspeakable acts…. So I guess I must believe in reincarnation later too. Although not until some serious introspection and self therapy to undo the insanity of catholic-ism I will be subjected to within 5years.
She was raised along with her brother William, by HER mother, whom I only remember as Grand mom D, and whom I will later grow to despise, even hate. She was a bitterly sarcastic and deviously manipulative slight woman who I only remember with a face full of wrinkles .The wrinkles should have been from a smiling happy face, but in fact were from a smile born of sinister glee in her handy work at making everyone’s life a living hell. She had a white pageboy haircut with tiny short bangs that looked like a cheap wig and she despised all the boys my mother will push out, though she was in love with her own son in some disturbed oedipal swoon
My birth mom, June, was a disaster of a personality mess, because of G-moms personality issues and I am sure G mom had her issues from her birth parents too, but where does all this bad behavior stop for love’s sake. I will later endeavor to do my best to put a stop to the momentum of their craziness to what ever degree possible , to my own detriment I will discover, through being too compassionate and fearful I show any crumb of repeating personality flaws that may stink worse than a dead cow in the August sun. So I will adopt compensatory behaviors that waste a lot of time and energy and creativity, all in an attempt to be a saint, to a fault.
Anyway, June was a disaster of a person waiting to collide with another set of meteorological events, in the form of my father, to create the perfect storm, that will spawn off 12 tornadoes worth of children who will go rampaging off across life’s landscape, either tearing up the life-scape of those they meet, or by colliding with their siblings vortices , amplifying one another’s potential wreckage factor, as we spend way too much time feeding our collective neurosis and self managing our practically clinical psychological issues either through drugs, bad marriages, religion or self neglect…. Later in life most who live past 45 will settle down into a slow spiraling storm, spinning overhead, dark, with small flashes of quiet lightning glowing within them now and again and a soft crack of thunder now and again trailing off to nowhere. Some of them will produce a lot of rain that at least grows some beauty, but almost all of us will never really deal with what is about to happen in a way that could help others who have similar beginnings, but at least they won’t hurt others that way they were hurt.

But Back to June, her one greatest flaw… She was pathologically, unable to love and show affection to most of her children, or other people, and especially, to herself. Her own mom was the product of a twisted, cold, hard, loveless upbringing. Stoic, tough love survival traditions handed down through countless generations from European stock reached a pinnacle of expression in my Grand mom D. She showed no love, physical affection, of appreciativeness of her daughter June….. ever. GMD, did however slobber all over her son William, who as per script from those old traditions, was the male child, who held the greatest promise to redeem the family name and fortune, in some way that even he, hated having put upon him. This almost perverse outpouring of attention, which was also laced with a not so hidden ulcer producing pressure to be a God for mommy, further isolated June from herself, her mother, her brother and most of the people she would come in contact with for about half her life, with shitty consequences.
June was unable to love. Life was not about love, but rather, she saw life as a gauntlet one had to run. Life was that long alley of brutish barbarians armed with clubs, all dirty and sweaty and stunk of muck piss and shit. If you made it through the double line of knuckle dragging brutes and survived coming out the other end….well then I guess she felt you had your reward waiting, which might be only, that you survived their beating you to a pulp. So your reward could be that you at least were tough enough to survive the bludgeoning life was waiting to give you, forget the possibility there was a prize waiting for you for running the gauntlet, you were happy you only spit out half your teeth and had one eye left to see with.
I guess she thought you just stumbled around crippled, the rest of your life, and eating berries in some kind of resting forest.
So that was June’s philosophy, by my estimation. Life was not to be lived, loved and to thrive within, expressing great gratitude for all its bounty and opportunity…. It was simply something one had to get through, forget having fun or expression or any interest other than survival. Just close your eyes, cover your head and start running, take your clubbing, try not to notice too much along the way and do your best to make a great show of it. Those were the messages I would later learn had been imprinted upon me in only 5 short years - mostly non-verbally, before I was sent away to an orphanage with some of my brothers. I ironically, in my 50’s I will learn from my birth mother in her 80’s that she herself was considered to be given away to another family by her own mother when she was young. I believe she almost looked forward to it in anticipation, which later in the Welsh boys young lives will prove to have dire consequences as our mother follows through and does hand her children to strangers. You would think 5 years wasn’t possibly enough time for such a depressing crippling outlook to soak into your psyche,,,, but NAY…..and it will take half a life time to undo the thinking that one’s offspring are disposable, and worthless….which we will get to later some where around the 1980”s, and the ever present fear that our own souls, poisoned by the failures of our parents could bloom within us and drive us to commit acts we swore to ourselves never to repeat. It was a demon, unconquerable..

June’s one lifeline through her whole childhood was her father. Even I remember what a gentle soul he was. He was a hard working janitor at a local parochial school. He had a great sweet sense of humor and a real sparkle in his eye - always. He loved to play jokes and tease in a fun loving way and had a tender spot in his heart for his daughter. And so, He was one of those souls who takes a life to try to teach the soul they take as a spouse, how to love and accept love. I don’t really know how well he did, but it was enough to stabilize June to some degree, even though the price he paid was 6 heart attacks. The last one killed him in his 50’s. Though he was a gentle soul, as a child when things really tore themselves apart with the family June will create, I will spend a short time living in GM D’s house as a way station en route to one more household before we are dumped at the orphanage. At G-mom’s, space was limited and I had to sleep in bed with Grand pop D. He would sit up in the night staring out the window from a really dark bedroom. HE would sit there in his white tee shirt and boxer shorts, and sigh quietly watching the blinking light of a factory’s name a ½ mile off across huge cinder gravel parking lots for factory employees. Factory work or janitor work were very honorable jobs to have post WW2 and that part of Philly was filled with them and endless row houses. The kind of row houses where you had a tiny front lawn with a burm midway between the short lawn and your door and the sidewalk and a short narrow back yard surrounded by a wood fence , which was mostly concrete leading to a garage under the house. Beyond the fence was an alley street between the next rows of houses. I will remember most, the bathroom here because it had a narrow skylight in the ceiling. It was pitched on an angle for rain runoff and had a pull chain on a round gear you could spin around to open it for air. Also, the smell of the bathroom will stick with me always. Urinal cakes that hung on the lip of the toilet filled your nose. And the mirror frame had fake pearl and abalone patterns mixed with a black back background. I will think it is neat.
So upon one of the early family breakups, we will go there to stay sometime in the early 60’s Sometime around the day JFk will be campaigning for president from the back of a convertible car that will drive down I street and my mom will shake his hand. The kids that are born so far will overtax the accommodations and we will all be put in to sleep with who ever. I, for some strange reason will be put in with GPD, who usual happy demeanor will somewhat vanish to me as we sleep in the same bed. Something was brewing in that guy that was hidden. He did not have all those heart attacks for no reason. Everyone loved him, yes but there was a price to pay. I guess his own daughter bringing 8 or so kids from a rocky marriage was only adding to his stress of living with the dragon lady. So I would wake at night and se him Sitting up at night, I could feel GPD’s quiet rage, and yes it was rage, it was a frustration that was hidden by his happy face most knew him by…. But it was there in the middle of the night, where no one could see it. I felt it. I guess living with that miserable woman was enough to drive him to sadness. Still he liked to laugh and was at times a great grandfather figure. Though with an edge.

7-17-07
Then was Father…. A true mystery who’s life will be cut short in his 40’s by a mob figures bullets, leaving behind even greater mysteries and apprehensions for his children to cope with through out their adult lives.

My Father was born into another hard Irish Catholic family of 12, he had 11 sisters. One can only imagine the psychological conflicts that would and will produce. I don’t really know a whole lot about his boyhood life and I speculate what might have happened based on behaviors that will manifest post WW2 when he is in the early stages of raising his own family of 12 children. The dark and terribly twisted sexual impulses, uncontrolled emotional expressions of rage and frustration will only be matched by his wit. Charm and humor, which will buy him many more years of forgiveness and compassion than he had earned from his offspring. I can only say I knew he had a real edge of learned violent behavior born of growing up in post depression America where in the cities, your neighborhood and where you stood in the pecking order was everything. My father must have decided early on to make sure he was in the top 10 standing of something in his neighborhood of Germantown, Philadelphia. He was a tough Irish son of a bitch who was unafraid to brawl at the drop of a hat, a misspoken word or too long of a glance from a stranger. Sadly, he will be just as ready to deal out such violence to his children, fueled by alcohol and barbiturates in the 1950’s.
My dad’s dad was a cold, seemingly mean spirited gent. No nonsense, little sense of humor, I never saw him laugh or smile. Tall and lanky with classic all white Irish hair as he aged, he barely gave his grand kids the time of day when we came to visit on Rockland St, directly across the street from a Catholic school where I will spend a fall later in life. Who can blame him for his stand offish behavior, by the time I was born he must have had 30-40 grand children, what did he care or have energy for. So I never really knew him, but I feared him, till the day he will fall over on his face while on vacation at Seal Isle City on the south jersey shore. That sunny Sunday mornings walk out to the end of the side walk to pick up the paper will be his last, just after my dad will be killed in Atlantic City.
Now my dad’s mom was another story. She was this big woman, with a strangely sweet voice and temper for someone who births 12 kids. She seemed almost vacant of stress and angst I will come to believe is normal in my household. I could not figure her out at all. She was almost too kindly and nurturing, almost too sweet, like candies yams with marshmallows at thanks giving. She had a great smile, was patient, and explanatory to the grandkids about almost everything. Was complimentary and made a fuss over everyone when we visited. I liked going there just for the positive attention I will rarely if ever get from my own mother or father. I was drawn to her and almost repulsed all at the same time. Something almost phony seemed to resonate from her. Like there was this dark secret ready to reach out and grab you and stuff you into a brick oven, like the witch in the woods in Hansel & Gretel. Still, everyone seemed to like her. She was this big soft lady with huge sagging upper arms as big as some men’s thighs that swung back and forth when I watched her feed laundry into an old wringer washer. Her face was all puffy and had the traditional milky white Irish completion of almost no exposure to the sunshine. I loved that wringer washer. I was mesmerized by its capacity to squeeze huge wads of wet clothes into really flat slivers of near dry arcs of fabrics that peeled from the rollers into a bucket for the clothes line. I used to have dreams about that machine, grabbing hold of my hand, and pulling my whole body through , making me about 2 inches flat. I feared, once your hand was in, the rest would follow. I could never understand at the age of 4 how GMWelsh was not terrified, she herself would be pulled through the rollers; her hands would get so close while feeding in shirts and pants. I guess the mystery is what drove me to test my dreams truth and one wash day I stuck my hand right in the rollers, on purpose!!! Just as I thought, in went my hand, with a pair of pants, to my GMW’s horror, when, bam, she hit a release button that made the rollers spring apart about 4” and they came to a halt. It was the only time I ever saw her get angry, at anyone, probably more scared really. So life in my dads 3 story row brown stone seemed to be exactly the same everyday we every visited with my dad. The row house was in the middle of the block and on a slight inclined street. So you could look up to the left while on the porch and see each porch was a few inches above theirs, and to the right all the porches descended like stairs. You could talk across all the neighbors who seemed to always be on their porch either direction to the next cross street. My dad’s front porch was painted an immaculate gray with a black ribbed lined rubber matt that ran to the narrow double front doors which lead into a glazed tiled floor and wall vestibule to another set of doors, then into the perpetually dark, living room dining room, kitchen and back mudroom. GPW was always reading the paper, and GMW was always in the kitchen, but she would always waddle out to great us with a smile and hugs. Profuse comments about how big we were getting were always easily dispensed and reactions from her husband were few. The other constants were the presence of Fran, aunt fran to me, who was a downs syndrome child that had been, birthed somewhere in GMW’s 40’s. She was pretty quiet, looked like a downs kid, was short, and round, with a perpetual wide eyed stare and open mouth with a fat lower lip that hung like a wedge of orange slice. She had the downs haircut, bowl and bangs easy management. She was an n angle, living out a life to teach us lessons we were told. She scared me, not a kid, not a grown up, what the hell was she? The other constant, the smell of old peoples house. What is that? Camphor, body smells, food, what? I will find it as I grow up in many a house hold. In fact I will live long enough to smell it develop in homes of people I meet in their early 50’s who live into their 80’s with no real noticeable changes that pin point the source. One of life’s mysteries.
We never went up or down stairs in that house, so it always was a source of mystery. How do you raise 12 kids in a row home? What went on upstairs as my dad grew up with 11 sisters all raised on strict catholic guilt fear and shame. I can only guess, after things unfold 20 years from my dad’s birth. So dad was a real mix of cultural, social, religious and psychological messages that will flower later into some wonderful moments of zany fun and horrifying moments of unpredictable violence. I am guessing my dad lived a typical urban existence of tough city life, mixed in with spoiled only male child privilege that went along just hunkey dory till WW2 hit after Pearl Harbor. Then he went from an 18 year old kid, living in a fish bowl, to being a navy medic. I have heard storied, that he went from one life of predictable simplicity, to Jap zero’s kamikaze diving into the decks of battle ships and aircraft carriers. His job was to dispense pain medication to the shredded bodied of kids his age and a little older on the decks of boats ablaze with fuel fires and littered with bits of steel bent as if they had been made of clay from ordinance.
The very narcotics he was trained to dispense would find their way into his own body, as a means of coping with what he will witness during the war. It is that rage he will bring to rearing his own brood, with interesting and tragic consequences.

Post WW2 years. Paradise promised from the GI Bill 6-18-07

My consciousness began to grow into coalescence in small burst. It was like tuning the dial of an old style car radio, (before digital will every be imagined). You’d sweep past the station you wanted and it was suddenly there in wonderful clarity, but the signal would drift and it would be gone, so you’d sweep back and forth trying to recapture the full signal, but only background static and garbled voices and multi layered music would emerge. I felt like that, in my fade in fade out unformed personality and consciousness. Like for a few moments, I was me, in a complete sense, I had all my faculties functioning, like a new engine, all cylinders were firing. I knew I was me, and I could feel me realizing I was me and where I was in time and space . It felt right…. And then poof…. Gone. I’d vanish from focus and time would pass, how much, I could not say before clarity returned, a clarity that I would not feel again till I was in my 30’s, especially through adolescence. But as a really young child, say 3, I’d pop in and out, to full focus, it I felt here and aware I was aware again. I never pondered where I was while I was gone, any more than any of us do about where we were in our past lives, we are just here now, just suddenly present and looking around at our surroundings, noticing everything happening, like we just dropped in from heaven or another world, as an observer.
Often time the moments of full awareness would have a surreal quality that I would resonate with later in life watching moments from Felline 0r Hirokowa films when I reach my second decade. Those film directors captured the look and feel of how some of my earliest moments of full awareness very closely in film. There is a reason dream sequences in film seem to connect with us, they mimic early perception very well relative for what we all will call “normal” awareness as we age. One focal moment of me-ness day occurred some time around 1956. I came into full focus and I was in the middle of a dust storm of huge proportion, to me at least. The tribe of Welsh’s was approximately 10 strong at that point in time, including parents, ( who were beginning, if not in full throttle towards derailing, I mean crap, mom who came from a family of 4, pushed out 8 kids already, and dads WW2 psychic war wounds was really approaching volcanic proportions) So as things approached critical mass, all the older siblings were often given parental responsibilities, of watching and managing their youngers, much to the older kids resent at times which they will later take out on us.
I vaguely recall being walked down a hill that was in the rear of our Levittown style tract home In Gibbsboro NJ. It felt like spring, it was sunny and low humidity, a blessing for the south Jersey region. The development we bought into was still under construction behind our house, we were in one of the first streets of completed homes, on Kirkwood Rd. The development was gobbling up a huge old farm area, a trend that will continue unchecked for another 40 years. Our street and the street below and behind us, was completed, but from there on into the farm, it was crawling with earth movers, big Cats, and construction workers. The cleared land was drier than dust now and there was a wonderful strong and steady spring breeze. It had picked up tons of dust and fine orange south jersey clay, which had been powdered to a talc consistency and was now swirling around all the kids of that development of maybe 30 homes so far, as we played and walked the newly paved streets. Everything came into sharp focus for me. Maybe it was that every sense was stimulated by the events. Visually, there was a virtual fog of dust sweeping all around us, almost horizontally flowing back and forth, obscuring the construction sight just 50 yards away. We all were laughing and playing in the air born material with crazy glee. The sound of the breeze. Whipping up the dust and blowing our hair as it matted with the powder, the feel of the day itself, which was what I will later learn, is called balmy, not hot, not cold, but perfectly comfortable and almost massaging to our senses. I stopped and froze, not knowing why, just watching the moment in all its detail. The kids running and yelling in the dusty wind, disappearing and reappearing in the suspended dirt, the sun filtering down through the dirty air, the blue sky, the smells of spring, soil and diesel engines. The faint pounding of hammers and tearing of circular saws off in the invisible distance…. It was mystifying; I was transfixed as if viewing an alien world. I was fully present. With out words, but a pure knowing and feeling absorbed in pure pleasure. I lingered as long as possible. And then, even more startling, I became aware of voices in my head talking to me…. And they were commenting,,, we are remembering things. We can have pictures in our head and look at them again later… I was having memories… how strange… to notice a mental function unfolding.

Then…. I was gone. I remember nothing significant for months on end after that. I know I must have been present, but things were not impressive enough to grab my attention consistently I guess. Following are recollection of moments that brought me into focus. Some of them seemed like a dream sequence I had had that I could vividly remember for a long time, even now 6-23-07 as I write this. Yet it would be years later when I repeated some of these dream like memories to older siblings that to their amazement, I would find out from them they were actual events. No one could believe I had recall of such occurrences and in such detail. Some of the events, by older siblings dating of them put me at about 3 years old. How odd to be a little video camera so young … I guess
Snippet memories…..

An actual dream / nightmare that tortured me repeatedly. I am sitting on the toilet. Our home is a split level. You enter the home and cross the living room to a short flight of wood stairs on the right that go up to the second floor. -A straight hall, 2 bedrooms on the right, one maybe 2 on the left with a bathroom.
So I am on the toilet, I finish and flush and to my horror, a hand emerges, old wrinkled and with claws with every intention to grab me and drag me down the toilet hole to god knows where. I turn and run out the bathroom, and to my even greater horror, the arm of the hand grows and follows me, out the bathroom and it makes a right turn, with me, I am running forward while looking over my shoulder, the hand is closing, I stumble down the stairs and I am screaming, but no one can hear, with all these people, no one can hear. I run through the living room and bear right into the dining room, it is just behind me, I bear right again into the kitchen, and there it catches me by my horizontal stripped polo shirt. I t drags me slowly back up to the toilet and pulls me into the dark hole filled with water squashing me so I fit into the pipes and then… I awake in terror…. This I will dream more times than I can count. It is the 50’s so it is non-verbally understood by me, you do not talk about your fears and feelings. You do not seek explanation of express a need to be soothed and have your fears dispelled. You suck everything up and bear it. After all, dad did, and he was in a war.

…… I am laying on the cool wooden floor that ran through out our house. It is the middle of the night when I awaken. The hum and vibration of a round Bakelite hassock fan vibrates my head as I sleep on a wooden floor. Many of my siblings are sleeping on the floor around the fan, with me, on blankets. It is a made to order south jersey hot humid night. Everything sticks to you and the humidity in the night air is so dense it is like fog inside and out doors. The wooded areas and farmlands still surrounding our little development produce even more water vapor in the air, so there is no relief. There is no such thing as air conditioning yet for homeowners. We all lay around the fan like the numbers of a clock face. I feel like the fan is my best friend. It offers a steady cool breeze and the rattle of the wire cage and plastic create a cozy feeling of familiarity. The motor has a hum the seems to drone through an electronic cycle that gets louder and softer, all night long in the dark…. And …I am gone…

….. I am standing in back of my house mid back yard, the hill stretches below me. It is cloudy and a little chilly. Below me, in the back yard of the Millers, who have like 6 kids, some of older my siblings play and are talking to their older kids. The featureless yards stretch in all directions. Suddenly, I am overtaken with the most irresistible urge to pee and I know I will never make it to the house. If I pee my pants, I seem to know there will be dire consequences. I see myself making a decision. I will pee in the dirt right here, but which side of myself to expose to the kids below - My front, or my rear. I go for the rear shot. I pull down my wide wale corduroy pants and tighty whities and wiz in the dirt. All the kids are hysterical and out the back door comes my mother unit, hand raised to waffle me for displaying my private areas so willfully. So I get a licking, as my parental units call a beating, any way. So much for using judgment…. then I disappear again…



Dog foaming at mouth- written 6-28-07

It is a hot sunny day in spring. I am guessing this because there are few kids around. Despite all the siblings, and new kids from post ww2 parents all with new homes from the GI bill, when they are away at school. It is painfully lonely, yet strangely beautiful to seem to have an entire town and neighborhood to ones self. I felt so all alone often, and partially because I was constantly told to go outside and play even at the age of 4-5, often completely unsupervised. I am riding a tricycle down the new sidewalks of our side of the street. Across the street no one in the older farmhouse areas have or want curbs. The land from their side of the street looks interrupted by the concrete streets and its edges are blurred by the creeping edge of dirt, cinder and weeds. Our side looks official and defined as modern. I could care, except for the treasures I would look for collecting against the curb. The metal long bristles of street sweepers, bolts and nuts, bottle caps, anything that caught my eye. This day however my lonely ramblings on my tricycle were brought to an abrupt stop. Between two parked cars was a dog barking at me viciously. It did not lunge at me but I knew not to move. It was an eye to eye stare down and I did not know what to do. I just sat motionless, afraid to budge. A neighbor heard the commotion, and came close enough to see what I was seeing. A dog with practically a beard of foam all around its mouth, menacingly snarling and barking so hard buts of foam were flying off its face. This lady told me to freeze, which I was already doing and she let me know that was a rabid dog, and I was in for big trouble if I blinked. She did not want to get bit either, so I was in a fix and she ran away to call a dog catcher……. Then memory faded
again….

Spinning…
I think I am 5… It is near dinner time. Our split-level home has a set of stairs that descend from the rear of the kitchen to a basement area. It is the kind that is half in the ground, half out of the ground. It has brown multi specked real asbestos tile that is sealed with wax and all shined up. Since our house sits on a slight hill the rear of it is ground level while the front of the basement has high windows that look like they are put in sideways. I can never look out of them unless I am on the beds that are now down in this area for the boys to sleep in. I have many a nightmare from the closet in the room that has an unfinished cinderblock wall that does not go all the way up to the floor joist. You can look into the crawl space that is dirt filled and see light coming in from the little vent openings way over on the other side of the house. This darkness is the perfect area for monsters to come out of and get me, and my brothers.
Off to the side of the bedroom area is a utility area where a double cement utility wash sink accommodates the washer dryer areas and hot water areas too. There are 5 boys now, and we are told to wash up in that sink. Since we all cannot fit there at once I go into the bedroom basement area and decide to spin. Spinning is such fun. Arms extended, eyes closed, spinning spinning…. Endlessly, enjoying the feeling and magic of it…Till there is this loud mean sounding voice… that scares me to a sudden stop. It is my father, He is a giant. He is dark tan from years as a bricklayer, He is tired and I guess freaked out that he has so many kids and the pressure of working so hard with no possibility of ever getting ahead. And here is one of his kids, simply spinning, enjoying themselves, when his life is nothing but toil. How dare I, I guess? What are you doing!!! He asks? …. Spinning I say in a meek voice, fiddling with my fingers the way kids do when they know something is coming their way…
What are you supposed to be doing!!!? … Washing my hands for…din…
Then there is a blur of noise and sensation. He smells like beer, too much most likely, sweat, dirt, cement, and all that is unleashed upon my ass, back and any available parts that could be beaten. He Snatches me up by my arm and I am air born by his might. Now, ironically, we are both spinning like one of them big chair rides at the amusement park, except no one is laughing. He unloads some kind of rage that seems to have no end. I remember sensing his total out of control. I went to a place in myself that was far away, while I was being beaten. It felt like it lasted forever and time slowed down. Every hit was stronger than the last and had a fury and quickness like he had to get it all in at once for some reason so he just whacked and whacked with these giant brick layer hands that were the size of catchers mitts and as hard as old calluses. Wham wham wham, over and over. I was far away, in my mind, to that place you go when you can’t believe something is happening, or you need to not believe it is not happening. It is a floating place where you are drifting along waiting for something terrible to be over so you can come back home ready to like your wounds like some lost dog…. Still as far away as I was, I could hear myself screaming all the while wondering what was so bad about spinning and not having washed up yet…. And when was this going to end…. I could see one or two whacks, but this was going on forever it felt… way beyond the even undeserved normal beating length I was accustomed to. Then….is was over as quickly as it began and he was gone up the stairs. No one questioned it, came to my aide, or consoled me, not my mom or siblings. They all knew the unpredictability of dad and it simply was as it was. O limped to the sink sucking in huge gulps of air the way little kids do trying to catch their breath after a good cry… wondering and wondering, what had I gotten myself into. You had to watch out for this guy, I decided. He was to be feared in the worst way, cause you never knew when he would unleash his rage for other stuff on you. It could be over anything, and if spinning and dirty hands were enough to trigger this king of a beating, imagine something really serious. I never trusted him again. I always tip toed around him and sort of, acted, always, after that, like he was a dad you could be warm towards, but it was an act. You were always waiting, and reading his mood, trying to sense when you might trigger him like a mouse trap .He seemed approachable, and he acted like he loved you and was a dad to you, but there was always something lurking, some quality of limitless violence looking for a place to express itself that needed little excuse to flare and burn you to a smoking cinder. It would be like that between us till the day he is murdered. He will grow to hate my wimpy personality that becomes secretively passive and in a way dishonest and sneaky to get what I need out of life, yet he will never never make the connecting to how such a personality will develop under his fathering. Never.